What has brought young Elana Resnick and Christina Freeman based in New York to arrive in Sofia and organize an interesting project at the Red House Center for Culture and debate in central Sofia? What is our perception of trash and why the objects someone discards might turn valuable to someone else?

In an interview for Radio Bulgaria, Elana Resnick and Christina Freeman explain more about their current joint collaboration. Here is who they are in brief!

Elana Resnick has been annually visiting Bulgaria for several years now, and is currently residing here. As a Ph.D. student of anthropology at the University of Michigan, she’s been working on a project in Bulgaria related to Sofia's waste management and the country’s Roma population many of whom make a living collecting valuable items from garbage bins.

Christina Freeman is a New-York-based artist completing her MFA in Combined Media in the Studio Art Deparment of Hunter College, City University of New York. She has come up with the idea for the project Plums for Trash which consists of trading things people plan to throw away.

In July 2011 Christina filled a suitcase with things she no longer wanted from her apartment in New York and carried them to Sofia, where she was visiting her friend Elana Resnick. They traded her unwanted objects in various markets throughout the city. Freeman returned to New York with the same suitcase full of these objects and traded them for other objects deemed "trash" by their owners. Freeman has exhibited the objects at The Red House from 20-26 April, inviting the public of Sofia to bring their own unwanted objects for trading. The goods she receives return to New York for a final exhibition at the Times Square Gallery at Hunter College May 16-June 16 2012.

Christina and Elana have been interviewed about their joint project by Radio Bulgaria’s Rossitsa Petkova and Delian Zahariev.